The Friday night keynote at the Midwest Bidding Symposium was given by John Acorn, the Canadian naturalist who for 7 years was “The Nature Nut” on the Canadian Discovery Channel and Animal Planet in the US. This was, as John says, in the days before animal wrestling shows displaced real programing on Animal Planet. John also used to a regular at the Rio Grande Birding Festival and we have had several brief conversations over the years. He has been off the lecture circuit for several years, raising a family and working a real job, teaching natural history at the college level, but Bill Thompson invited him to this year’s MBS, where he told us about the challenges of teaching kids to appreciate nature in the digital age.

We bumped into each other several times after his lecture, the final time (so far) in front of the Lakeside Hotel where he was poking around in the milkweed pods. I asked him what he was doing and he told me there was an Earwig in there somewhere and, since they don’t have earwigs in Alberta, he wanted a picture. So of course I joined him in his poking. We found the earwig and both took our pictures but while looking I spotted this Milkweed Beatle, a far more colorful creature than an earwig ever thought of being, and of course we both had to photograph that.

We discussed cameras and I showed him my Samsung Smart Camera with its macro mode and WiFi connection, and I told him about processing the images on my Nexus tablet.

Somewhere after the Milkweed Beatle and before we found the earwig a lady walked by on the sidewalk, probably on her way onto the hotel. “What are you doing?” she asked (or words to that effect).

John said again, “There’s an Earwig in here somewhere.” but strangely enough she just kept on walking…as did several others who did not even bother to ask. Clearly John’s celebrity has taken a hit since he got a real job, but that was not what struck me at the time. I turned to John and said…”You see, that’s what normal people do. You tell them there is an Earwig in here and they just walk on by…”

“Yes,” he said, “odd isn’t it.”

And of course, to both he and I, and to you probably as you are reading this, it is indeed odd. How can anyone not stop and look at the Earwig in the milkweed? If that is normal then I don’t want to be it. I mean you run the risk of not seeing the Milkweed Beatle either…and who knows what else.

There is no pleasure greater, I my humble opinion, than going through life with your eyes open to the wonder of creation. John Acorn has always had it right. Go ahead and call me a nature nut. Proud and happy to be one.

And that, in a nutshell, so to speak, is the Sunday Thought. And let the unexpected Milkweed Beatles be your just reward!